


Measure How I Miss You In Broken Promises

by Bhelryss



Series: fe8week2016 [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Eirika (Fire Emblem) - Freeform, Gen, Self-Indulgent, Seth (Fire Emblem) - Freeform, day 1: oath/traitor, hitting both sides of the prompt coin because lmao wynaut, turning traitor: the fic the movie the 1000 word backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8364856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: Glen rises to become the Sunstone. He falls.
Cormag is not his brother. He's talented, of course, no draco knight isn't talented in one way or another, but he finds his fealty isn't as...unbreakable as he'd thought.





	

It should have been the happiest day of his life, the day he got his position as General Sunstone. And it was, almost. But he’d been old enough to remember the day Cormag was born (old enough to know how hard it had been on his mother, having another child so late in life), and even rising to the top to stand among legends and heroes like Duessel and Selena couldn’t top the day he’d become a brother. But he took his new oath, to serve and protect and to  _ lead _ , and smiled to see Cormag’s widely smiling face among the gathered knights.

“So witnessed,” intoned Duessel, who would later have a clap on the shoulder and a respectful word of advice for the newly minted Sunstone.

“So witnessed,” echoed Selena, who would smile to see him with one arm around Cormag’s shoulders and the other around his aging mother’s.

“Stand, my Sunstone.” Emperor Vigarde said, and the king Glen was so proud to serve would later smile kindly in passing as he moved to speak to his son. 

And Glen stood, and looked on his king, and his generals (his equals, his seniors), and turned to stare out at the gathered knights and nobles and repeated his vow. To serve, to protect. To lead as best he could, and not spend their lives uselessly. To be a good general, a good man. (A good son, a good brother.) To serve, to protect. To lead. To set a good example.

The fact he has ascended to replace the mad, disgraced Moonstone was a thought easily forgotten in the rush of ceremony and congratulations.

It was a fact Cormag remembered, sitting in an enemy encampment. A free man, to fly out and home at any point, for the most part. With information on the enemy, an enemy the Moonstone himself had vowed were the murderers of the poor, lost Sunstone. He knew what a loyal, faithful soldier would do. (He knew what the Fluorspar would do, known as she was for being the embodiment of loyalty to the crown.)

In then end the bond he had with his brother, severed as it was by death and joined as it was to the growing sense of his nation’s king becoming a stranger, was stronger than his vows of knighthood. To serve, to protect. 

To serve...to protect...but who had protected Glen from the Moonstone? Who had protected his brother from the man who should’ve had his back against a fight? Not the king. Not his emperor. Not the man who had sat a young child and his teenaged brother at a table and - To protect. To serve.

Damn his vows. Damn them all. 

May the great demon take the entire nation, if this was what fulfilling his vows meant. If it meant serving under the same banner as the murderer of his brother, if it meant that outright lies and rewarding madness and a disregard for life that was outright criminal. Damn it all.

He spent hours coming to grips with that decision. Sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, in a borrowed tent with a loaned bedroll. Kindnesses by an enemy princess for a man who’d lost his brother. Tears were wiped away with anger, and it took every inch of his willpower to pull himself back from the brink of pointless sobs.

Cormag was a free man, still. It was dark, he could fly off in the night. He could go anywhere. Away from this place, towards home or somewhere else. His mother was in Grado, but Cormag had gone AWOL, if he returned he would face repercussions. The problem, he found, between the two options, was he couldn’t reconcile himself to either.

Going home, to a beloved king who seemed further from the man Cormag had wanted to serve than a beggar was from a rich noble, to the army that had welcomed Valter back readily into its ranks. Or going away. Where he would never understand why. Would never get revenge or justice for Glen’s murder! Would leave his countrymen, his comrades, his mother to the questionable mercies of an invading force.

The night was gone before he knew it. The rising sun turning dark shadows a soft grey, and then the princess was  _ there _ , and her redheaded paladin shadowing her. Her voice was gentle, and Cormag was infinitely aware of the pity in her expression. He’d lost a brother, and his conviction, he wasn’t an invalid. Even if he still felt more like falling apart than like a real person.

He bristled, which in turn unsettled the paladin enough for him to bristle right back. Princess Eirika’s tone was soft, like she thought he might shatter if she spoke too harshly. “Do you know what you will do?” It was clear from the noise that her small force was leaving. Moving outwards, onwards. The back of his throat was bitter-tasting. They would come to Grado eventually. Vigarde would...who knew what they’d do to his people. 

Eirika wouldn’t want them to be cruel, but Eirika was one princess. Her people...what did her people know of Grado? The idea that had plagued him all night firmed. “I’ll join you.” He says. It’s the worst idea he’d thought up, but it was the one that resonated the most.

He’d get his answers. He’d get his vengeance (justice was a small cry in the back of his mind that sounded like Glen). As one of Princess Eirika’s soldiers, he might even be able to help protect the innocent people of Grado. Maybe.

That was the guilt talking, trying to rationalize what he was doing.

Breaking his oaths. Shattering his vows. Abandoning his people, his nation, his king. No excuses. No avoidance. No lies, not to himself, not about this. His eyes sting terribly, but he blinks the sensation back. He knows what he is. Soon, everyone will know what he is. (He hopes, selfishly, that Glen might’ve understood. But Cormag won’t pretend that Glen’s death isn’t a motivating factor. Glen’s opinion shouldn’t, couldn’t, matter. Glen was dead.)

His mother will need to know, he’ll send her a letter so she doesn’t have to hear it from some callous officer instead of directly from him. So she won’t be blindsided by the news of what he is by a stranger. The paladin’s eyes are wide, and Eirika’s are still sorrowful. They know what he is, too.

****_Traitor_**. **


End file.
